this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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When was that? Where?
The house I bought in my 20s (for $275k, inflation adjusted) is now worth $475k.
The house I bought in my 30s ($480k, inflation adjusted) is now worth $800k
In my area at least, home prices are far outpacing inflation. I literally couldn't afford to buy the house I'm in today at its current value.
Don’t forget, mortgage rates (at least in the US) are still the highest they’ve been since 9/11/2001.
That makes it even harder to buy the now more expensive house.
I bought my first house back in 2009.
My monthly mortgage payments have been flat for 15 years now. I pay less than 1/4 per month that someone buying my house today would.
Even though we make 2X what we did back when we purchased the first house (graduate degrees), we would still struggle to make the payments on our current place if I had to pay the market price today.
The small city I work for in Texas has a median home price of nearly $3,000,000. The cheapest home currently available in the city is 1.8 million.
The median income doesn't support those numbers. How does that work? Those same houses were 1/5 the price 10 years ago, and 1/3td the price in early 2021.
Areas with historically cheap housing are seeing house prices double annually, but wages aren't keeping up because people who already opened a house 3-4 years ago still have a cheap house with 2-3% interest.
A 400ft 1br studio apartment in the town I work costs $2,300/month. That would have gotten you a hell of a house 5 years ago.
That's insane. Not even 20 years ago, you could throw a stone and find an apartment for like $500-$800 in that general part of the country (TX/OK). Not a slum or a hovel, and not in the sticks. Just a normal apartment.
Not calling you a liar, but my parents' house is half that size, pretty far from the nearest small city, also in the Midwest, and is worth almost 600k.
Also, just saying people can just move if they want to own a home is pretty stupid.
What kind of job am I going to get in a small Midwestern city?
A couple years back during covid, in Finland. House prices here have been creeping up as well but not as aggressively as where you have lived. I doubt that's the case in all of the US, there must be places with more modest prices. I "downgraded" to a smaller city when I went from renter to owner, couldn't have bought a home to my liking in Helsinki due to the prices.
Well there's the issue. Finland isn't experiencing anywhere near the level of housing cost inflation of the US, Canada, and Australia.
And cheaper areas in these countries are cheaper for very good reasons (they suck to live in/have no jobs available).
They have Social Services too if I'm not mistaken.
"Social services" can hold a wide range of stuff and arguably every country does have social services, but yeah it's one of the nordic social democracies with an extensive social safety net in place. I'm extremely grateful for it, even though I personally don't use those services (apart from you know, like roads and shit) and they get funded through my income.
Which means you are not spending monstrous amounts each month for private health insurance which shall only cover things after you've spent 10K
Sure, just move to a place whose best restaurant is McDonalds, the available job market is K-Mart or construction, internet is satellite at best, and 4/5ths of the people think the gays are coming to steal their guns.
I get what you mean, but cutting the hyperbolics out, it doesn't sound too bad. You can't have it all and I had to make concessions about a thing or two.
As an amusing sidenote, the second worst thing about the town I moved to was the lack of mickey Ds. I have to resort to the Finnish off-brand trash version instead.
It literally is not hyperbolics. That's why people are saying you're naive.
This dude and the people upvoting him are braindead, just stop, they are never going to get that things are different in other parts of the world, obviously everyone just needs to move to Finland to solve all issues.
That's not hyperbole, that's people's reality. You are just so privileged and out of touch that it seems crazy to you. You have to make concessions about a thing or two? Well in the US those concession are not going to the doctor so you can afford rent. It's not like people are just blowing money on BS.
Sure. If you live in Cuntass, next to a half dead tree and 500 million mosquitoes
More importantly, there are no jobs in Cuntass, so you can't even afford to live in that shithole unless you work remote
To change the subject completely. I hope my country embraces the work from home option. Especially the public sector should experiment with this form of hiring. People living in all parts of our country is a political goal.
I don't know why southern or "cheaper" states haven't embraced legislation guaranteeing a right to work from home when available. It seems like it would only be a boon to low-COL states to have a larger number of well-paying professionals in the state.
So when you said it's possible to buy a house in your 20s you meant in Finland. Then you make a wild assumption about the US to try to justify what you said? Wut? Dude you are misrepresenting the situation left and right.
Sure there are places houses aren't insanely expensive, but they are generally many hundreds of miles away from where there are jobs available that may pay enough to purchase said house.
Having lived in Europe it amazes me how many Europeans believe that because it's still in the country, it's not all that far. But if you compare directly a few hundred miles is usually in another country in Europe, where in the USA it's more often still in the same state.